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Connecting the present and the past: cognitive processing and the position of adverbial clauses in Samuel Pepys's Diary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2017

MEIKE PENTREL
MEIKE PENTREL*
Affiliation:
Institute of English and American Studies, Osnabrück University, Neuer Graben 40, 49069 Osnabrück, [email protected]
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Abstract

The present article studies the linear order of main and temporal adverbial clauses in the Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660–1669). In the development of a framework that combines cognitive and historical data, processing principles identified for Present-day English (e.g. Prideaux 1989; Diessel 2008) are tested for this ego-document from the seventeenth century. The factors investigated are the iconic temporal order of both clauses, the length of the adverbial clause and the implied meaning of the clauses. Moreover, the discourse function of the respective clauses will be discussed. On the basis of the Uniformitarian Principle, the present study assumes that processing principles that are valid for Present-day English predict the position of the clause in past language stages to a similar extent.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 21 , Special Issue 2: Cognitive approaches to the history of English , July 2017 , pp. 263 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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